In various configurations of Storage Area Networks (SANs), server networks are connected with software to allow servers to share storage on common storage devices, thereby creating one or more storage pools. To provide the ability to manage SANs, Storage Area Management (SAM) software exists that provides comprehensive, centralized management of storage networks. One example of such software provides a suite of tools including a storage node manager, a storage accountant, a storage allocator, a storage builder and a storage optimizer.
Management of a SAN is performed in some instances via a graphical user interface (GUI) client running on a remote computer and communicating via a network or other communication link with a management server running on a different computer. The client computer may provide one of several operating system platforms such as the HP-UX® operating system (available from Hewlett-Packard Company, Palo Alto, Calif.), the LINUX® operating system (LINUX is a trademark of Linus Torvalds, San Jose, Calif.), the SOLARIS® operating system (available from Sun Microsystems, Inc., Palo Alto, Calif.), or any of the various versions and releases of the MICROSOFT® WINDOWS® operating systems (available from Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Wash.), such as 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, or XP. At least one known GUI client is a JAVA®-based client that can run on these various operating systems. This client uses a JAVA® virtual machine (JVM™) such as that available from Sun Microsystems, Inc., Palo Alto, Calif., to provide a menu of device management applications that can be invoked by mouse clicks. Some of these device management applications must be launched by invoking commands that differ on different operating systems. Thus, multiple links have been provided on menus accessed via a mouse click. Each link has included a descriptive name that would allow a user to differentiate between commands for each operating system (e.g., “Telnet (Windows)” or “Telnet (HP-UX)”).
This method of accommodating different command invocations on operating systems relies upon the user to select the right choice for the client operating system. Furthermore, scalability may become a problem if there is a need to support additional operating systems, and menus may become crowded with commands that a user may never need or be able to use.